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Trolls Are Still Actively Trying to Influence Brexit and US Elections (go.com)
TechCrunch reports:
A major new campaign of disinformation around Brexit, designed to stir up U.K. 'Leave' voters, and distributed via Facebook, may have reached over 10 million people in the U.K., according to new research. The source of the campaign is so far unknown, and will be embarrassing to Facebook, which only this week claimed it was clamping down on "dark" political advertising on its platform. Researchers for the U.K.-based digital agency 89up allege that Mainstream Network -- which looks and reads like a "mainstream" news site but which has no contact details or reporter bylines -- is serving hyper-targeted Facebook advertisements aimed at exhorting people in Leave-voting U.K. constituencies to tell their MP to "chuck Chequers." Chequers is the name given to the U.K. Prime Ministers's proposed deal with the EU regarding the U.K.'s departure from the EU next year.
ABC News reports: When the Justice Department unsealed criminal charges detailing a yearslong effort by a Russian troll farm to "sow division and discord in the U.S. political system," it was the first federal case alleging continued foreign interference in U.S. elections. Earlier Friday, American intelligence officials released a rare public statement asserting that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in ongoing efforts to influence U.S. policy and voters in future elections. The statement didn't provide details on those efforts. That stood in contrast with the criminal charges, which provided a detailed narrative of Russian activities...
The criminal complaint provided a clear picture that there is still a hidden but powerful Russian social media effort aimed at spreading distrust for American political candidates and causing divisions on social issues such as immigration and gun control.... Court papers describe how the operatives in Friday's case would analyze U.S. news articles and decide how they would draft social media messages about those stories. They also show that Russian trolls have stepped up their efforts with a better understanding the U.S. political climate and messages that are no longer riddled with misspellings.
CNN notes that one week before America's 2016 presidential election, "one of the Kremlin-backed accounts denied that Russian meddling, saying: 'Russia's Putin says Moscow not trying to influence U.S. election.'"
ABC News reports: When the Justice Department unsealed criminal charges detailing a yearslong effort by a Russian troll farm to "sow division and discord in the U.S. political system," it was the first federal case alleging continued foreign interference in U.S. elections. Earlier Friday, American intelligence officials released a rare public statement asserting that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in ongoing efforts to influence U.S. policy and voters in future elections. The statement didn't provide details on those efforts. That stood in contrast with the criminal charges, which provided a detailed narrative of Russian activities...
The criminal complaint provided a clear picture that there is still a hidden but powerful Russian social media effort aimed at spreading distrust for American political candidates and causing divisions on social issues such as immigration and gun control.... Court papers describe how the operatives in Friday's case would analyze U.S. news articles and decide how they would draft social media messages about those stories. They also show that Russian trolls have stepped up their efforts with a better understanding the U.S. political climate and messages that are no longer riddled with misspellings.
CNN notes that one week before America's 2016 presidential election, "one of the Kremlin-backed accounts denied that Russian meddling, saying: 'Russia's Putin says Moscow not trying to influence U.S. election.'"
Everybody I disagree with is a troll.
Unfortunately there are a lot of gullible people in the world who just skim the headlines and don't bother to dig down in any detail on an issue. Lazy thinkers will always be with us and all we can hope for is there are enough people who aren't that way in order to counter them. Lately it's kind of depressing how much of this has distorted the political realm.
It's odd that we [the us] do it to them and it's ok, but fuck them if they do the same thing to us. God I hate politics and politicians.
Hell, Obama flew over personally to threaten Britain into voting remain and no one raised a shitfit about America "influencing" a British election.
Funny how these trolls always affect the side the person writing the article doesn't support, isn't it? I mean, no one would dream of spreading misinformation on the Remain side - they're all saints devoted to the purity of Truth.
I'm sure Russian trolls are feeding out misinformation about all sorts of things. The real issue is whether it has any more effect than the lies politicians tell.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Imagine people actually able to see differing points of view. They might just decide they don't like what their betters have planned for them
I remember two years ago, in the poll booth, about to vote for/against Brexit; I was trying to sum up what the campaigns had told me. I came to the conclusion: a mass of emotional froth, little of hard reality upon which to make a decision. All sorts of contradictory predictions; few agreed facts. I remember listening to opposing politicians who could not even agree on, what should have been, basic facts. I came to the conclusion that both sides were lying (or at least greatly playing up their arguments), many others did also. The main agreement was that 'the other side are not being truthful' -- both sides said that!
Two years later: it is not hugely better. The problems that Brexit may bring have now been revealed & are being shouted loud but no one can say what will happen on 29 March 2019 (Brexit day), partly because exaggeration of dire consequence is a tool of political negotiation. The promised sunny uplands of EU-restriction free international trade are also being promised, but are nebulous.
Debate amongst politicians is at a level that would bring discredit to a bunch of squabbling 4 year olds at infant school.
I have not posted for a few years but this one really has annoyed me enough to say something regarding these Brexit ads.
For a start there are no new elections or referendums so it's hardly trying to influence a vote, the Guardian (left wing) newspaper would love to have a second referendum and reverse the vote and is most likely why they have flagged this up.
I can see how not knowing who is paying for these ads may be a problem for some, but like I said there is no public vote coming up and therefore as far as a I know campaign financing rules do apply, besides I did not see the Guardian kick up a fuss when Soros donated £400,000 to reverse Brexit.
Finally a large chunk of Conservative (the governing party) MPs themselves have said the same thing that this advert is saying so how is this fake news?
If there was any semblance that there was democracy in the UK, it has pretty much has been laid to rest.
While this sort of thing is typically frowned upon -- you both are being a bit silly, in that you're missing the point.
That was an *open*, and *plainly visible* thing. That is not even remotely the same as people pretending to be real users, genuine citizens, and instead being paid for foreigners, pretending to belong to the country they are trying to destroy.
If Trump, Putin, anyone tries to OPENLY say "Vote this way!", that has no bearing on this conversation, on this topic. It is instead, the goal of secretly funding, and secretly trying to destroy a foreign power via trickery that is the problem. A problem, that really only democracies are vulnerable to, for in a fascist state (like Russia, or China), if you dissent? You're in trouble period.
Where as the citizens of a democracy? Have the RIGHT to complain...
Meanwhile, we have sneaks, spies, paid for people FAKING belonging to the citizenry of democratic nations. That's a very, very dangerous thing to do to a democracy.
I remember, the the poll booth 2 years ago, trying sum up what I had learned from what the politicians has said over the preceding weeks. I remembered a huge amount of emotional froth but little by way of solid detail or summary of what would happen. I had listened to debates between politicians who could not even agree on basic contemporary facts - that should have not been hard to ascertain. The misinformation was more than political spin: it was outright lies. I am not the only one of that opinion.
The only agreement between the sides was 'the other side is lying'.
Now, two years later, things are not much better. We have been told of all sorts of horrible things that will happen after 29 March 2019 (Brexit day) but are well aware that these are being played up. Both sides have too much to lose if the hard lines being talked about come to be. Exaggeration of consequences and declarations of impossibility seem to be the way that political negotiations are done. The bright sunny post Brexit uplands, that we are assured (by the Brexiteers) will come to be, are equally nebulous.
What passes as debate between politicians would bring discredit to a bunch of squabbling 4 year olds at infant school.
China, Russia and Iran could hire teams of people to write news articles with bylines and promote them overtly, that's fine. China Daily, RT, Tehran times, are good examples.
Trolls aren't concerned with even writing news articles, not even slanted, biased news articles, the truth is immaterial to their objective, and certain truths run contrary to their objective. The trolls themselves pretend to be somebody else to disrupt conversations, recruit followers and expand their influence. They focus not on informing people, but on polarization and division. They're paid to do this, for this purpose.
https://tinyurl.com/y9dby46f
It's all underrated. (Except the stuff I believe in, of course)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What difference does it make if some particular bit of bullshit propaganda comes from Russia or Enron or the CIA or the DNC/RNC or whoever? The message is what's important, not the messenger. You say they want to "destabilize" the system? Well so do I. That's why I voted for Trump, because the system fucking sucks. And now that they're out of power, the left wants to destabilize things too. After exhausting every lega possibility for removing Trump they've resorted to open violence and calls for dismantling the government itself. Did Russia get us to that place, or did CNN and the Kochs/Soros and all the other rich, american sociopaths behind 99.999% of the political so-called information people are exposed to?
You're holding up the trivial fact that someone lied about their country of origin in the standard course of lying about a hundred other things to push a political agenda as the big, bright dividing line. The nationality of the person who created a meme or article or whatever else is the absolute last part of the equation I give a fuck about. If some Russians in a basement somewhere on a shoestring budget can out-persuade billions of dollars worth of the best professional advertising people America has to offer, then more power to them. If that's the case, maybe they deserve to run the world after all.
Or maybe you're just desperate for a scapegoat to explain away your failure and are far, far less immune to paranoid bigotry than you like to think.
You have to keep pro-Brexit Facebook ads in perspective:
This level of gaming the system clearly dwarfs a few Facebook ads
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Hell, Obama flew over personally to threaten Britain into voting remain and no one raised a shitfit about America "influencing" a British election.
He went over as himself and argued for his ideas. This is different. Russian posing as a Brit is different than the American President coming over as the American President. Obama making his pitch is him trying to win an argument. These Russion propogandists don't care about any side of the argument, they're trying to create division and sow misinformation. Is it really that hard to see the difference?